Monk Animations

Here's an aspect of the monk class that I think is actually pretty key... combat animations.

Now I know that every class likes and wants cool animations. But I think there is no class for which cool animations are quite as critical as for monks. Monks, especially if unarmed, don’t have big-ass weapons to swing around or flashy spell effects to cast. Therefore, they more often than not end up looking like geriatric stick figures suffering from nervous spasms.

When we create a monk, we all have high hopes of cool combat animations - armed or unarmed but especially unarmed. So it is especially underwhelming and disappointing when they stand there and swing or jab like a fighter or rogue who doesn’t realize he dropped his weapon. This is particularly disappointing since we are so conditioned to expect amazingly cool martial artists.

Whever animations come up in pre-launch discussions, everyone invariably dismisses this as fluff or they say "Don't worry the animations will come later." But given the demands to get the game out they typically seldom do. So, my request is this: make it a design requirement to ensure my monk really feels and moves and responds like Bruce Lee or Kwai Chang Caine (as just two examples).

And to go along with the cool animations, make monk combat particularly fast and varied. A defining feature of the monk should be a focus on very active and responsive melee moves, relative to the comparably slower casting or swinging or stealth-strike cadences of other classes. It know it can be challenging to achieve both complex animations and highly responsive, fast-paced combat. That's why I would think you'd want to ensure your combat system can handle complex monk animations earlier rather than later in the development cycle.

I know it is far too much to ask, but I would love it if you could get Michelle Yeoh and Donnie Yen to come in for mocap. Then we could also have selectable fighting styles that go through a short kata/stance change as the energy focus of the new stance changes the animations. Shaolin Tiger/Crane/Monkey/Snake/Mantis, Jeet Kun Do, Tai Chi Chuan and Wing Chun would be good starters. Especially Wing Chun.

Having a roundhouse kick and a standing jump kick were great for EQ and Vanguard. I think that more could be done to make fighting fun and that kind of involves some dramatic styles that move the player and/or the opponent. This would be great for CC (stuns, knockdowns), pushing mobs into place for AoE attacks (knockdowns, kockbacks) and battlefield mobility for monks (leaps, rolls, reversals).

I love unarmed Bagua Zhang and Xingyi Quan forms in this video. The Xingyi form was originally designed for fighting with a spear in a narrow area. The Bagua movements are ciculur in nature are fun to watch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xww5t6Xr9gQ

I had a wonderful opportunity to study under a Internal martial arts master. He taught Bagua and Xingyi division and Tia Chi and Wudang in another. I went to his school to learn Qigong, stayed for the comprehesive martial arts progam. It was a wonderful experience. Unfortunately my master passed away under mysterious circumstances. It was a great 2 1/2 years. I still practice my Tai Chi, Zhineng and "Dragon Tiger" qigong forms. I am novice at internal martial arts, but coming along with qigong practice.

I look forward to discussing how the Qi/Chi system will work with monk class.

Two words: Speed and precision. A monk in combat would almost appear to be just a blur with all limbs in constant motion, but not recklessly - quick, deliberate, and sometimes subtle. Always one step ahead of their opponent. It should be very fun to watch. I enjoyed the monk animations in DDO, as well as Kharazim's animations in HotS.

In EQ, when you got a new kick, it shared a "time to refresh" timer with most of the other kicks, which just about made training your old kicks a waste of time (but we did it anyway!). With your idea, we could use those old kicks as part of the combination and that would add a great deal of depth to the combat system. Love it. 8)

They've said they don't want combat too be too combo-oriented, because that often leads to players spending too much time staring at their action bars, rather than on the action. But imo, if any classes are gonna have combos, it should probably be the monk. Perhaps not as much as warhammer, but something along those lines. However, they've also said Pantheon monks will have a very similar feel to EQ monks, so I'd start there for reference.

I don't remember staring at skillbars a lot while playing my swordmaster. Since only the finishers had cooldowns, your set up combos were very intuitive when you got used to your shortcuts.

It wasn't twitchy at all, just very very cool to play IMO.

I believe you, but that doesn't mean there wouldn't still be a lot of other people that have to keep looking at their skill bars. It doesn't have to be twitchy for it to just be an essentially endless rotation of button pressing. Anyway, I'm just reiterating what was said in the last stream about trying to steer clear of combo-oriented combat. They said they are investigating a few abilities that can open up opportunities for other abilities, (whether it be another one of your abilities or even an ability of another class in your group) but probably not much more than that. Of course, it's still pretty early in the development of the combat system so we'll see how common those types of abilities are. But like I said, of all the classes, I would expect monk or rogue to have the highest concentration of interdependent abilities.

As a side note, this thread is more focused on animations, not abilities themselves.

I don't remember staring at skillbars a lot while playing my swordmaster. Since only the finishers had cooldowns, your set up combos were very intuitive when you got used to your shortcuts.

It wasn't twitchy at all, just very very cool to play IMO.

I believe you, but that doesn't mean there wouldn't still be a lot of other people that have to keep looking at their skill bars. It doesn't have to be twitchy for it to just be an essentially endless rotation of button pressing. Anyway, I'm just reiterating what was said in the last stream about trying to steer clear of combo-oriented combat. They said they are investigating a few abilities that can open up opportunities for other abilities, (whether it be another one of your abilities or even an ability of another class in your group) but probably not much more than that. Of course, it's still pretty early in the development of the combat system so we'll see how common those types of abilities are. But like I said, of all the classes, I would expect monk or rogue to have the highest concentration of interdependent abilities.

As a side note, this thread is more focused on animations, not abilities themselves.

Ok ok I'll stop with my combo jibberish :-). But having said that, IF you'd introduce a combo-ability system, the devs could flesh out some really cool animations for these specific abilities, as opposed to having to make cool animations for a dozen weapon types that still look awesome and unique.

I hope the Monk class has more depth than fancy animations and combos. They would benifit from internal alchemy system where your can build upon self-buffing system toward different stats or attributes.

How will they (Devs) define the Monk?

What type of culture will Monks in Pantheon?

You can debate this forever. But I am opinion of have a class of depth. The animations are nice to have, but are fluff compared to making a meaning and interesting Monk class.

The animations from what we have seen from the streams looks pretty good. A class that typically fights without weapons leans on the animations a bit more than the classes using weapons or magic. Really good work VR.

Regarding martial arts styles to use for animations, it may be easier to stick with flashy styles like the various forms of kung fu/wushu unless there's a way to program the player model grabbing hold of the NPC. If that were possible, I'd say Krav Maga is 100% the way to go, with some bonus ground/fighting/Jiujitsu moves. Since I don't think there's a way to put in that kind of interactivity unless they turn all monk fights into Tekken-style brawls (making it hard for others to step in), we'll probably end up with the basic punch punch, upper cut, hook, butterfly/tornado kick animations.

Animations are important. I'd love to see knockdowns and throws. But at the very least, I'd like to different animations for different punches and kicks and, as someone else mentioned, not have them overriden by later kicks and punches or at least work into combos so the animations aren't wasted.

I agree the monk class should have good animations to prevent boredom. I remember i had a hard time on neverwinter nights 1 with my level 1 monk using one basic attack per round (one attack per 6 seconds). It was pretty boring, slow and predictable. Went better on higher levels though.

So i agree monk animations should be fast-paced and exciting. To be honest, what i currently fear from this game are the slow combat animations, even if they improved a lot since the first videos. Seeing a monk stand idle then throw a shy punch to a mob all day would really break immersion. And there are so many techniques to get inspired from...